The mere idea, city to have cited with him and his God. that something similar, or even more, might take place at Beth-el, make the old serpent foam. He hastily takes his measures, and is at no loss for accomplices. The lying priests are selected for the execution of his plan of operation. He informs them of the danger which menaces them; he excites their fury, and points out the weapons by which they may the most successfully oppose the enemy of their influence and authority. But the priestsas we imagine to ourselves the progress of the affairhesitate to appear in person in the contest. They make their pupils acquainted with the impending danger. This young viperous race think themselves strong enough to enter the lists with the hated prophet, and make themselves responsible, not only to drive him back from the borders of their city, but also to render him averse ever to return to it. Elisha arrives within the precincts of the idolatrous place. He comes not to curse and destroy: the merciful object of his visit is to collect the backsliders under the banner of grace. Suddenly, a noisy youthful troop rushes out of the gates of Beth-el, like a savage host, forty-two in number. "Little children" is the expression used in the narrative, but the original implies young people of from fifteen to eighteen years of age. They surrounded the man of God at some distance, burst into loud laughter, and are daring enough to foam out the bitterness of their hearts against him, in the basest and most impious mockeries. They select the prophet's bald head as the aim of their insults; for a bald head was regarded by the vulgar in Israel as something disgraceful, because it was an usual consequence of leprosy to deprive the head of its crown, as the hair was wont to be called, and because the naked ness of the upper part of the head was regarded as a sign, not only of bodily weakness, but also of moral imbecility. Thus, there was a very wicked meaning in the term " bald head," which these knaves applied to the man of God. We have here not to do merely with an eruption of youth. ful petulance. It is the considerately pointed and satanically poisoned arrows, that fly from refined wickedness, which whiz here. What else was meant by "bald head" than weakling! leper! "We will soon get the better of thee, thou ridiculous hero. We fear thee not, thou prophetical impostor." And the impious addition, "Go up," or, more strictly speaking, ascend! soar aloft! what else is meant but," Send for horses like thy master! ascend the fiery chariot, and get thee gone through the clouds !" It is consequently a scoffing allusion to the ascension of Elijah, being in part an impious suspicion of the fact, and in part a ridiculing of Elisha; as if they had said, "Thou mimic of Elijah, prove to us that thou art a prophet. If thou art able to do any thing, let us see it." Therefore, in every case, more than a mere eruption of childish petulance. It is devilishness, conscious wickedness, bitter sarcasm, intentional blasphemy of that which is sacred. Towards the Tishbite, they certainly would not have acted thus. They knew that he was not to be jested with. Elisha's mildness, on the contrary, unfettered the unclean spirits in their heart. But the circumstance of their being able, with their hatred, to overcome the force of love which beamed upon them from the whole appearance of the prophet, renders their impiety only the more flagrant and atrocious. Ah, who can defend himself against the profoundest grief at the sight of these youths thus irrecoverably lost! How much better had it been for the young wretches had chil they been resigned, whilst sucklings, to the fiery arms of Moloch, than, by escaping this death, to die eternally, as the victims of sin and Satan, of the gangrene of judicial hardness! and tell me, has this viperous brood disappeared from the earth with the forty-two at Beth-el? Would it were the case, and that the rising generation of the present day, not only amongst us, but every where, did not teach us the very reverse! And it is this which grieves us the most deeply in the present evil times, that we look around us amongst them in vain for an anchorage of hope with respect to the future. It is this which pains us most to the heart, that we perceive the practice, at least, of those profane and ungodly theories, which their fathers have drunk down like an intoxicating potion, ingrafted also into the rising generation. Alas! the evil crops of your own sowing are already shooting up in luxuriant fecundity around you. You have eaten sour grapes, and your dren's teeth are set on edge. You have conjured up spirits at which you are now yourself horrified. You would gladly lay them again; but where is the incantation to which they will listen? You now reap the fruits of your own devices. You piped songs of liberty to your children, and you now see them dancing, alas! upon your own authority. You tore down the limits of the Divine word and reverence for it; and therefore ascribe it to yourselves, ye parents, guardians, and teachers, that a troop of youthful rebels now rages around you, of the restraining of whom you already begin to despair. You taught them to regard the religion of the Bible as a disgraceful chain, prepared by the superstition of a benighted age, and its preachers as proud priests and ambitious Jesuits. Your pupils were, alas! only too susceptible and docile. We now command them, for God's sake, to honour father and mother; you are aware how little attention they pay to our admonitions. You have said much to them of the years of discretion to which the present century has attained, of emancipation, and the independence of reason, and of the inalienable rights of man; see how they begin to practise these rights; and, as a just recompence, you are yourselves the first who are obliged bitterly to feel the efforts at independency made by these young autocrats. It is not that we see through a darkened glass in passing so severe a sentence upon the youth of the present day. Only go from house to house, from school to school, and listen to that which passes there, and you will convince yourselves that our complaint is an universal one, uttered the most loudly by the parents and teachers themselves. An evil and poisonous mildew lies upon the languishing plantation of the rising generation amongst us. The inmost kernel is rotten, the root is gnawed. They are a bold and obstinate race, destitute of childlikeness, and, for the most part, initiated, even in their infancy, into all the mysteries of abomination and ungodliness; in the sight of whom it no longer occurs to any one that of such is the kingdom of heaven-a race who are strangers to every thing like filial obedience, modest subjection, and tender respects for parents and superiors; who mock at the kindness with which we would gladly lead and direct them, and rise in rebellious defiance against severity. Yes, they are, in general, a race who no longer regard any thing as sacred, or as enjoining respect, or commanding reverence. In the lower classes, they are base, vulgar, and licentious; in the higher, morally unnerved, entirely pervaded by deceit, and full of intolerable and absurdly haughty presumption. God be merciful to that period for which this generation is ripening! Brethren, the foundations of the antichristian. kingdom are laid; they are deposited in the hearts of our children! The man of sin need only shake the tree of the nations, and his disciples will fall, like ripe fruit, into his lap and his arms. The fig-tree putteth forth leaves; the summer is at hand. The Lord have mercy upon us, and prevent the approaching destruction! III. We now know how we have to regard the blaspheming rabble before the gates of Beth-el. It is more than a troop of petulant boys; it is a horde of young villains, who, sold to the father of lies, have taken a decided part against the kingdom of light and of truth. They come as the repre. sentatives of their native town, and, in reality, in the devil's name, who hopes, by their means, to annihilate, with a single blow, the further labours of the prophet, and thus inflict a deadly wound upon the cause of God. And, in fact, the plan of attack is not unwisely contrived, but perfectly worthy of its cunning inventor. For reflect, if the rebels had so far succeeded that their mockery of the man of God had remained unpunished, what would have been the consequences? The respect for Elisha would then have been for ever at an end with the great mass of the people. The hardiness of his adversaries would have reached its extreme height, and have broken through the last opposing barrier. During the whole of his life, Elisha would then have remained the butt of vulgar witlings and wicked mockers, and could no longer have shown himself unmolested amongst the idolatrous race. But this was the very thing which the old adversary aimed at by his youthful auxiliaries. Elisha's moral influence was to be neutralized on the outset ; his prophetic labours for ever trodden under foot from the very commencement; he was to be |